![]() ![]() You’ll love your new haircut or your money back. It also saves space to get rid of all those pesky subjects and verbs. However, there are a few cases where fragments may be acceptable.īecause advertising tries to sound friendly and approachable, ads often use fragments to mimic conversation. As a result, we’ve gotten used to hearing fragments during conversations and may think it’s OK to use them in our writing.īut fragments are never acceptable in formal writing if you’re writing a school paper, a cover letter, a business document, or the like, avoid fragments. We use a lot of fragments in our everyday speech because humans are naturally lazy and speech occurs in context. All sentences should make sense on their own and should make even more sense when read in context with the sentences before and after that. ![]() Was I talking about puppies who can’t stand without help? Maybe.įragments should be avoided because they depend on the sentences around them to make sense. If you read that fragment, “Because they can’t stand on their own,” without context, you wouldn’t know what it meant. Take a closer look: that “sentence” is really a dependent clause it relies on the question asked just before it to make sense. A fragment is a chunk of thought, an orphan that can’t make it on its own. ![]() In a fragment, at least one of these elements is missing, and so the fragment can’t stand on its own as a complete thought. If you are telling a story, a few fragments might suit your purpose and style well, but if you are writing an essay or crafting a business document, it’s best to steer clear of them.Get your free sample back in 3 to 6 hours! And he did is a sentence beginning with a conjunction, and it’s a one-sentence paragraph.Īs always, judge for yourself who your audience is and how much wiggle room you have for breaking the rules. Your high school English teacher would find three things wrong with this description. All the same, he was determined to astound us. ![]() No one thought that Ethan could make the jump it was just too high. Journalists, bloggers, and fiction writers often use them. That said, a fragment within a clear context can sometimes serve a valid dramatic purpose. Without question, you should avoid sentence fragments in formal situations and academic writing. READ MORE: When (and how) to fix sentence fragments Stylistic sentence fragments Fragments can sound as if they are carelessly blurted out. It’s a subtle psychological difference, but if you are corresponding in a formal setting, it is worth taking care to write complete sentences. Adding the subject will build a stronger, more confident-sounding sentence: Another famous example of a short-but-complete sentence is “Jesus wept.”Īvoiding sentence fragments not only makes your writing easier to read, but it can also make you sound more polished in polite correspondence. Nothing in the sentence demands further explanation. I ran may be a short thought, but it has a subject ( I) and a verb ( ran). But that doesn’t mean that short sentences can’t be complete. In that example, making the sentence longer was the solution. Now the fragment has become a dependent clause attached to a sentence that has a subject ( the party) and a verb ( was canceled). To complete it, we need further explanation:īecause of the rain, the party was canceled. It leaves us wondering what happened because of the rain. On its own, because of the rain doesn’t form a complete thought. Here is a glaring example of a sentence fragment: For example, you could hide under their beds and wait for dark.īoth remedies result in structurally sound sentences. There are many ways to frighten little brothers. ![]()
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